Clarizen Blog

Clarizen in Action – Hodges-Mace

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Hodges-Mace was founded in 2004 and is a major provider of employee benefits communication, management and enrollment products and services. It delivers custom solutions to over 1,000 clients and is focused mainly on large employers based in the U.S. We talked with them recently to find out about how Clarizen has helped them deliver innovative and complex solutions to meet their clients’ needs.

What was the situation before you switched to Clarizen?

We experienced huge growth, expanding rapidly and with that work-loads started to mount up across all of our teams. Different groups were using different tools and methodologies and most were using several within one team. This led to a large number of lost work-hours and important information getting lost or not passed to the right stakeholder. One of the biggest problems was the inefficient use of spreadsheets to try to track and manage project progress and deliverables.

What were you searching for when you approached Clarizen?

Due to these issues, we needed a scalable solution that could help us to deliver the problem-solving speed and accuracy of decision-making that we had become known for. The project management software needed to be able to give us faster and easier to use access to new client protocols and service implementations, it also needed to assist in our efforts to provide an effective and efficient service for our existing clients. The solution would have to be able to integrate our existing processes successfully and standardize the projects involved in our standard product life-cycle. Various project tasks needed to be streamlined and made easily accessible to all team members wherever they were based.

With our rapid growth, administration and integration threatened to slow us down. Clarizen’s scalability and cloud-based platform gave us the necessary size and speed to centralize our efforts. The sophisticated Clarizen interface allowed us to create templates for our various teams so as to allow for turnover and precise replicability. The Salesforce integration that they provided helped us to keep all stakeholders in the loop and give clear visibility right along our sales-to-execution path.

Plus, the huge reduction in wait times for sign-offs from responsible parties led to increased project speed and cut churn numbers. The reporting capabilities that Clarizen offers give us a powerful tool for sharing information and speeding up communication. The standardized report templates have drastically reduced administration times and because everyone is working off the same templates they know exactly how to find the information they need.

What was the reaction from your staff?

The automatic emails and project transparency allowed executives, department heads, managers and team members to quickly and easily monitor the progress of important projects without having to request status updates. This reduced meeting times and led to more efficient collaboration processes. As Leslie Hanson, Manager, Business Operations and Programs told us: “I love Clarizen. It’s working really, really well. I have department heads coming to me now saying, ‘Hey can we use this tool?’ and ‘Can we set up this tool?’“

Needless to say, Hodges-Mace is a fan of Clarizen. To find out what Clarizen can do for your own organization or to read up on industry news, contact us or head to our blog. Curious to know which other brands use (and love!) Clarizen? Check back for future “Clarizen in Action” pieces. Want to be featured? Let us know!